Regulators widen the net on "surveillance pricing" and AI-set prices

"Surveillance pricing" — using location, browsing history, device type or other personal data to set different prices for different people — has gone from academic concern to active regulatory target. The FTC opened a Section 6(b) study in July 2024, ordering eight companies that sell AI-powered pricing tools to retailers, including Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach and PROS, to turn over documents on how their systems work.\n\nThe FTC's January 2025 preliminary findings, released on a 3-2 party-line vote, described tools capable of using signals as granular as mouse movements and abandoned shopping carts to adjust prices or rankings in real time, serving at least 250 retail clients between them. Commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak dissented over the timing and completeness of the release, and the agency has not yet published a full final report.\n\nEnforcement momentum has since shifted toward states and Congress rather than stalling. California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened his own investigation in January 2026. New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a consumer alert on surveillance pricing and has opened an investigation into at least one major consumer-facing company's disclosures. In December 2025 the FTC issued a civil investigative demand to a delivery company over its use of an AI pricing tool, and on March 5, 2026, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform launched a separate investigation focused specifically on AI's role in surveillance pricing.\n\nFor pricing teams, the practical takeaway isn't that personalized pricing is illegal — it generally isn't, in the U.S., outside protected-class discrimination — but that the audit trail matters. Regulators are asking what data feeds a pricing model, who can explain what it's doing, and whether marketing claims about "AI pricing" match what the system actually does with an individual customer's data. Expect more state-level bills like California's AB 446 to follow.